


The cabin and the woods

by Tabata



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5867662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: This story is an AU from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.<br/>We call this specific 'verse the Slavesverse. Here, Blaine is a high society Lord in some sort of post-medieval/fantasy-ish AU. He was the Supreme General of the Army but now he's retired and his job is to teach new recruits the Art of War. Against his father's advice, he married Cody, a kid half his age and to add layers of shame upon layers of shame he ended up keeping the sex slave his bff Sam gave him as an ironic present for his wedding. Then the kids proceeded to suck him into a threesome and at that point Blaine's life was over.<br/>At this point, Blaine has already faced a family feud with his father and a war, from which he miraculously came back alive. Things with his father are changing and it's time to get ready to face society. To do that, he decides to take a little holiday with his two boys before conquering the city as he did with everything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The cabin and the woods

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know if Liz and I will ever write the events that brought us here in this verse. Possibly, yes. But who knows? In the meanwhile, we can give you all that came after.

“How about this?” Cody comes out of the walk-in closet with his arms open, showing his outfit.

The walk-in closet is a recent addition to their room. The old armoir – despite being huge – was not made to contain the clothes of three people, especially if two of them are shamefully spoiled kids. Blaine has always loved to buy Cody things to make him even prettier, and he easily followed the same path with Leo, covering him in new clothes and jewelery as often as he did with Cody, which makes Leo's wardrobe the richest a supposed slave has ever owned in the history of slavery.

Cody's current ensemble consists in a pair of long linen pants, a shirt with long sleeves attached to the shoulders by silk threads and what intensely tries to be a fur-lined waistcoat, but it's only a flimsy vest with a very thin line of blue fur along the hem. Leo doesn't even know what animal could have had such a coat. In these clothes, Cody is ready to go North as Leo is ready to rule the country. 

“You're gonna freeze in those clothes,” Leo declares, after a scrutinizing look. He's been sitting cross-legged on the bed judging Cody's outfits and eating candied fruit for the past half hour, and he hardly approved anything. “You need heavier pants and shirts. And a coat.”

“But these are the heaviest clothes I have!” Cody cries out in desperation, the entirety of his wardrobe scattered everywhere in the room. “And I've never owned a coat.”  
Both are pretty normal statements for someone who has lived his whole life in a place where temperatures never drop under 77°. Cody doesn't even know what winter is, so why does Leo expect him to have the right clothes for this journey?

As a matter of fact, Leo doesn't have them either. When they arrested him four years ago, they took him away with the clothes he was wearing, and he was given a ragged long robe by the slave holder who bought him.  
Once he got to Blaine's house, Blaine had him changed again and he's been half-naked since then. Here it's too hot to wear too many clothes anyway. 

“We'll have to call the tailor,” he states, nodding as he puts the last of the candied fruit in his mouth. “He has a lot of work to do in a very short time, we're leaving in three weeks.”

Cody bats his incredibly long eyelashes. “But we need Blaine's permission for that.”

That becomes the-reason-of-the-day to burst into Blaine's office unannounced. It's so natural for Leo to just push the doors open whenever he wants – and so impossible for him to learn not do do it – that at some point Blaine just resigned to have him enter his office randomly without having been given permission first. It's just a part of him, like his disregard for any kind of authority and his obsession with fruit cut into pieces.  
This time, tho, Blaine is deeply caught up in a conversation, so when the double doors slam into the wall, he jumps in his leather armchair and looks up in horror, probably ready for an assault.

“We need your permission to call the tailor because we don't have any winter clothes,” Leo announces, striding in with Cody at his heels. Cody would have never entered Blaine's office unless his husband had called him there before Leo came along, so he's still very wary of the whole procedure. He follows Leo's lead in almost everything, but Leo often does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it, and Cody can't shake the awkwardness of it yet.

Blaine sighs. “I told you several times that I decided not to mind if you want to barge in like that, despite it being very rude,” he says, patiently. “But you could at least say hi before anything else. Especially when I'm not alone. You just interrupted a very important discussion.”

Normally, Leo would have talked back – because that's always the first thing he does after a reproach, no matter if he's right or wrong – but today he doesn't, because when he looks up to Blaine, he finally notices that there's a second person in the room, and that person is Lord Anderson. The old man straightened up the moment they came in, and he's now standing tall and upright next to his son, with his arms behind his back.  
After Blaine went missing during the war and then miraculously came back, things have changed between Lord Anderson and his son, and also between Lord Anderson and his son's two lovers. The man was not happy with Cody – whom he considered too young and too much of a commoner to be the husband of a man like Blaine, and who couldn't quite obviously give Blaine a biological heir – and he certainly disapproved of Leo, whose presence in the house was against the law, since a married couple never owns sex slaves, and whose attitude towards everything was disrespectful to say the least, not to mention that Blaine treated him like a second husband. Now Lord Anderson is more lenient towards the boys, and he's more willing to know them better before judging their every move, but they are still very wary of him, especially Leo, because he's an hardened, stiff man, and he's very hard to read.

“Hi,” Leo greets Blaine and then nods to the other man. “Good morning, Lord Anderson.”

“Good morning,” Cody echoes him blushing, with a tiny nod of his own.

“Good morning, Cody,” Lord Anderson answers politely. “Good morning, Leo.”

The fact that the man called him by his first name and not some ugly term like slave or servant is a great conquest that doesn't go unnoticed by anyone in the room and makes Blaine particularly happy. In fact, he smiles, despite the invasion of his office. “So, what's so urgent to storm in here today?” He asks, having heard nothing of what Leo was saying when he came in.

“I told you, we need to call the tailor because we don't have the right clothes for the trip.”

The trip was the first thing Leo and Cody came up with when they found out Blaine was alive and things with Lord Anderson settled down. They didn't want anything but to spend some time with him alone somewhere else that wasn't their home. They chose to go North, because Cody has never seen the snow in his life, and making him play in the snow seems to be the boys' priority.

Obviously, Blaine didn't agree to that right away.  
First of all, he was still worried about taking the boys out of the house. In fact, he still is. A lot of bad things can happen to them, so he'd rather have them here where they are more protected. But, most of all, immediately agreeing with the idea of a trip would have been no fun at all! He quite enjoyed to see them try everything they could think of to convince him, from relentlessly asking three-four times a day every day to try and mellow him down with good behavior around the house and a very _bad_ behavior in bed. 

Leo obviously led the crusade, but Cody was completely in it too. Leo would storm his office every day, sit on his desk and explain in vivid details and with arguable scientific facts why a trip to the Northern Regions would have done the three of them good. Cody would sit quietly next to him, nodding and reiterating every single concept. Then, at night, when Blaine thought he could relax and enjoy them both – finally without any sense of impending catastrophe – they would maneuver him around, offering themselves or each other to him, pleasing him, bring him to the point of pure bliss and then ask about the trip again.

By the time he agreed, they were both exhausted, discouraged and disappointed. So, when he said yes, they just stared at him for the longest time before actually understanding that they were really going on a journey with him. Then, they started screaming in joy, and after that Blaine's life turned into a succession of requests, programming, demands that almost made him regret having said yes. Almost, because the boys were so happy that he couldn't really be mad at them.

“I hardly believe you don't have any clothes,” Blaine says with a smile. He clearly remembers having to transform Leo's old room in a walk-in closet because the amount of clothes of the three of them combined was quickly becoming an hazard.

“We have plenty of clothes, just not the right ones for the journey,” Leo insists. “Everything we own is either linen or silk, and should I remind you that I don't have more than four shirts?”

“The boy is right,” Lord Anderson butts in, his voice strong but calm. Everybody turns to him at once, but being suddenly watched by three pairs of eyes doesn't even make him flinch. “They can't go to the North half-naked like that. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen Leo wearing a pair of shoes.” There's some sort of reproach in the way he says that, but he's vaguely amused, so nobody gets angry. This must be the old man's way of joking around. 

“He has them,” Blaine grumbles. “He just doesn't want to wear them.”

“That's because it's too hot,” Leo replies. “Now, about the tailor?”

Blaine thinks about it and realizes Leo's request is not unreasonable. He himself is quite prepared to go North – he's been there several times with the army, so he owns the right pieces of clothing and a few coats – but the boys have never set foot out of the country, so all they have are flimsy things. “All right, call him,” he says, nodding. “Have him coming over this afternoon and explain him what you need. I leave the task to you. If the man questions your authority, feel free to tell him that he either listens to you or we're not gonna ask for his services ever again. Anyway, for anything, Cody can guarantee for you.”

“Got it,” Leo nods, with a smile. He likes when Blaine gives him some power. And since his love for Cody borders on adoration, he doesn't mind having him guarantee for him. “Thank you.”

They are both so happy with the outcome of this morning's invasion of Blaine's office that not even Lord Anderson's presence prevents them from bending over the desk and kiss their man at the same time. Then they both run off, saying goodbye to both of them. What's left in the room after this youngsters hurricane is a very embarrassed Blaine and a stiff Lord Anderson, politely clearing his throat.

“I'm sorry, they are very excited for this trip,” Blaine says, tidying up a desk that doesn't need to be tidied up at all.

“I saw the enthusiasm,” Lord Anderson comments, and then sighs. Blaine almost hopes his father is about to move on from what happened and go back to their conversation, but he's wrong. “When are you leaving?”

“In three weeks,” Blaine answers. “I want to take care of some matters first, I don't know how long we're gonna stay away.”

“It's not the better moment to go away,” Lord Anderson says with affection something that would have come out drily and filled with disapproval just a few months ago. “You've just returned from war and people are talking about your family situation. You need to stand your ground.”

“I know that,” Blaine agrees. He's aware to be the talk of the city – it would be impossible not to when everywhere he goes, people don't even do him the courtesy of speaking _behind_ his back – and that all the rumors need to be addressed to try and contain them, but he can't do that now. He needs to be his old self first, strong and unapologetic. “But they need me more than the city does, and I need a break from all of this. I can't face this situation if I don't put myself together first. I intend to come back and settle the matter with this city once and for all, but I want to come back strong.”

Lord Anderson nods. “I understand. A good soldier knows when it's time to retreat and regroup before launching the next attack,” he comments, but then he gives him an amused look he hasn't been giving him since he was four or five. “But make it quick. I didn't agree to this to have you lose the favor of the city.”

“If I convinced you, there's no way I'll lose the city,” Blaine snorts.

Lord Anderson can't help but laugh a little. “Right. So, where are you going, exactly?”

“I don't know yet,” Blaine answers. “It might be fun to just leave and see how it goes.”

“I was afraid you would say that,” Lord Anderson sighs. “I think having a destination and maybe, I don't know, a place to stay would be more appropriate, since it is the first time you take the boys out of the country.” 

“Well, Leo used to travel a lot when he was... “ Blaine pauses out of habit. He and Cody try to never mention Leo's past life.

“Very well. Cody, then,” Lord Anderson corrects himself. “I think it would be better for him, since he's so... delicate, not to drag him around in the snow during winter, especially in that awful weather they have in the north. I swear, why anybody would want to live in a climate like that is beyond me.”

Blaine smiles, knowing his father hates cold almost as much as he hates everything else. “I will think of something.”

“Or you can take advantage of your family possessions,” Lord Anderson insists, taking something out of the pocket of his long rob and placing it on the desk.

Blaine looks at the keys in front of him. They are three, long and old fashioned. The keychain alone must weigh a ton. “Are these...?”

“The keys to our cabin, yes,” Lord Anderson confirms. “Nobody has been there since your mother died. I think it's time for somebody to enjoy it again. It'd be a pity to let that beautiful house go to waste.”

Blaine remembers how they used to spend every winter there, he and his parents. They would leave at the end of October with a handful of servants – always not enough, according to his father – and they would stay there until Spring, with his father coming and going to take care of his business. Then, when his mother died, Lord Anderson gave order to close the beautiful winter house for good as he did with most of their properties. He never found the courage to sell it – or maybe he never really wanted to – but they never set foot in it again. His father giving him the keys now means more than it seems. 

“I don't know what to say,” Blaine blabbers, sincerely moved.

“Then don't say anything,” Lord Anderson. “Chances are that I won't like what comes out of your mouth. Now, let's go back to the matter we were discussing. I don't have all morning.”

Blaine nods, vaguely aware of his father's voice speaking of money transfers and new estates to acquire, his eyes unable to move away from the three keys on his desks. If this is not a sign of changing times, he doesn't really know what it is.

*

Three weeks and two days later, they are outside the biggest cabin Leo has ever seen. Now, he hasn't seen many cabins, but none of them was two stories high with a patio and stables.  
“You really need to learn the meaning of the word _cabin_ ,” he says, getting off his horse. 

“Well, it's way smaller than our home,” Blaine protests.

“And still big enough to house three or four families,” Leo points out, shaking his head.

Totally uninterested in the conversation, Cody has slid down his horse and he's now stomping his feet and rubbing his hands together. “Can we go inside?” He pleads. Thanks to the marvelous job of the tailor – who, by the way, had no problems in following Leo's instructions, since he didn't know nor care about their family's mess – he's wearing warm blue pants, his first wool shirt ever and a coat so lined with fur that makes him twice as big. He whined a lot because those clothes felt weird on him, but he suddenly changed his mind as soon as they crossed the mountains and the wind became a cold hand slapping his face. Now he's grateful for all the layers of fabric he's wearing, but the weather is still colder than he thought it would be. His eyes are glossy and his cheeks are incredibly red because of the wind. Not even his brand new gloves seem to be able to keep him warm anymore. “Please?”

Blaine chuckles and heads towards the door, leaving to Leo the task of securing the horses' reins to a tree. “You see, if you had let me send some servants ahead...”

“No!” The boys say in unison. This about the servants was a battle Blaine lost from the beginning. Leo and Cody were adamant about not wanting anybody else in the cabin except the three of them. For once in his life, even Cody didn't want to listen to reason. It was either they would go alone or not go at all. And it was clearly so important to them that Blaine just gave in.

“If you had let me send some servants ahead,” he says again, chuckling, “they would have gotten the house ready for our arrival. Instead, we're entering a cold and dusty place.”

“We're going to take care of everything, it's gonna be fun!” Leo says, excited. “I'll teach Cody how to build a fire.”

“You can build a fire?” Cody says in awe, as they follow Blaine inside.

“Of course! We didn't have servants when we traveled with the caravan,” Leo explains. “Everybody did everything. I can even cook.”

Cody would like to ask more about Leo's cooking skills, but once inside, both he and Leo stop talking to look around. As far as Cody is concerned, the _cabin_ is smaller than his own house, but it's so different from it to be completely fascinating. He's used to marble and stone, to glassless windows and tons of curtains and veils to keep the heat away but let the light in. Here everything is raw wood and heavy fabrics. And he has never seen a fireplace so big before, which is what prompts him to let out a tiny, excited scream and run towards it. Leo finds the cabin huge, of course – despite having lived in a palace for the past four years, it's still incredible to him to consider such a big place home –, but what he likes of this place is that reminds him of home. The living room gives off the same cozy, warm vibe of his parents' caravan, even now that the furniture is covered with sheets and the fireplace is empty. This place is more _him_ than the palace in the desert will ever be.

“Very well, boys,” Blaine says, after watching them stare at the place in awe with affection, “no servants means we have to get to work. I'm opening the stables, settling the horse in and checking the plumbing. You two clean a bit, put away the supplies and light the fire.”

“We can start with the sheets,” Leo says as he takes off his jacket. Cody feels a little out of place – he has, in fact, never had to do anything – but he's excited at the idea of doing so many things he has never done before and to take care of the house all by himself, so he does what Leo does. He takes off his coat and he puts it on the coat hangers by the door. At least, it's a little warmer inside.

The first floor includes three big rooms. One is a living room, one is some sort of music room and the third is the kitchen. Under the sheets in the living room they discover two big couches in a L-shape at the center of the room, a table in a corner and series of bookcases that cover two whole sides of the room. In the music room there's a piano. It's desperately out of tune but the boys can't help but press a few buttons, none of them able to play music at all. In the kitchen, it's Leo's turn to squeal. Apparently, he misses the kitchen more than he thought. The servants and the cook never let him inside the kitchen at home – as a revenge, of course, not out of respect – and so now he feels elated to be able to move around the room and touch everything.

Upstairs there are the bedrooms and the bathrooms, three of each. Since at this point they're already very tired, the boys decide that they can take off the sheets in only one bathroom and one bedroom. When Leo's eyes fall on the big double bed in the room, he's really tempted to stay where he is and drag Cody under the covers, but he can already hear Blaine's voice in his head, scolding him because he gave him a task and he ignored it. So he sighs and goes out of the room. 

“I bet I know what you were thinking,” Cody teases him, following him downstairs.

“You might be aware of the general idea, but I can assure you, you can't imagine the details,” Leo says, resigned. “Come on, we need to get this fire started.”

The fireplace is a monstrous stone thing, and Leo has to study it first because he has never started a fire inside one of these things before. But, for some reason, he thinks Blaine wouldn't be happy if he made a campfire in the middle of the living room, so he has to get the hang of it. “You take the firewood,” he instructs Cody. “A few pieces, not more. They are there, on the right.”

“Yes, sir!” Doing things on his own has been extremely funny and, despite having just taken off a few sheets and dusted around, he feels like he can do anything he wants. When you've been living surrounded by servants who do everything for you, even the smallest things you do on your own make you proud. 

The heap of firewood almost reaches the ceiling and it's made of dozens of pieces of wood tidily stacked. Cody realizes that they have three fireplaces at home – in their bedroom, in the ballroom and in Blaine's studio – but he has no idea where the firewood is kept. He has never seen it stacked in the house, the servants take care of bringing in new wood when it's needed. He takes a mental note to ask the governess where they keep the woods. So, he studies the heap, trying to decide how to proceed. He knows he can't just take pieces of wood from the bottom – he's not that stupid – so he drags an armchair to the heap and steps on it.

“Cody, are you done with the wood? I think I got it,” Leo calls. The answer to the that is a loud, dreadful noise that makes him look up to see the whole heap of wood collapsing on itself and over Cody, who screams.

Leo stands up an runs to Cody, who fell down on the armchair and is covered in pieces of wood. He looks a little confused as he tries to move away from the mess. Intellectually, Leo knows it can't be that bad, but the mere idea of Cody being even vaguely hurt makes him anxious. “Cody! Are you okay?”

“Yes, I...” Cody looks up, a little pout on his rosy lips. “I don't know what happened. I was taking a piece of wood from the top, I swear, and the heap just...”

Leo doesn't care about the firewood, the heap or even the freaking house for that matter. He takes pieces of wood away from him, throwing them on the ground. He checks him up an down for injuries. “Are you okay?” He asks again. “Are you hurt?”

Cody looks up at him, but now he seems more annoyed at the mess he made than anything else. “No,” he says, then he looks at his hand and spots a little scratch on his palm, and raises his hand to show it to Leo. “Only this.”

The look in Leo's eyes at the sight of the thin line of blood on Cody's palm can only be described as horror. He knows it is not fatal – unlike that time when Cody was bitten by a poisonous snake and fell into a coma for weeks – but his mind can't process it neither calmly nor reasonably. It's just the blood, probably. The idea that something hurt Cody enough to draw blood from him. 

“You're hurt.”

“It's nothing,” Cody says, sensing the panic in his voice. “It's just a scratch.”

But his words don't seem to calm Leo in the slightest. In fact, he grabs his other hand and drags him away from the armchair and the pieces of woods now scattered everywhere on the floor. “Come,” Leo says, and then pushes him on the couch. “Sit down and wait here. Luckily, we brought a first aid kit with us.”

Leo disappears upstairs – where they brought all their baggage earlier – and comes back ten minutes later with a bunch of bandages and a bottle of disinfectant. “This should do,” he declares, coming down the stairs as he reads the instructions on the bottle.

“Really, Leo, it's just a scratch,” Cody says again, smiling gently at him. The tenderness Leo can show him sometimes always hits him, especially remembering how it has been between them for a while – a very short period, to be fair, but still quite some time. Leo hated him as much as he hated Blaine. In one occasion, he even threatened him with a lamp. And now, here he goes, panicking for a little cut on the palm of his hand. “You don't have to worry.”

“I'm not worried, I'm being practical,” Leo replies. He places the bandages on the coffee table and kneels on the floor in front of him. “Give me your hand.”

“You have your worried face on,” Cody insists, obediently giving him his open hand, palm up.

Leo soaks a cotton ball in disinfectant and gently cleans the little wound on Cody's palm. The wound is so small and he's so careful that Cody doesn't even flinch. “I don't have a worried face,” Leo protests.

“Oh, you have a lot of faces,” Cody teases him, and then he crumples his face, mimicking Leo's intense expression. “See? This is your worried face.”

Leo barely holds a chuckle, but he's supposed to be worried-pretending-not-to-be, so he manages to keep a straight face. “Shut up! That's not true,” He says, amusement clear in his voice. Once he disinfected the wound way more that it was necessary, he skillfully bandages Cody's hand.

Cody looks at his bandaged hand as if it was a masterpiece. “Wow! You can even bandage wounds,” he exclaims in wonder, opening and closing his fingers to test his hand's mobility. “Is there anything you can't do?”

“Am I allowed to answer that question, or would that ruin our holiday?” Blaine butts in, coming in from outside. “I can start listing things today and end a week from now.”

Leo turns to glare at him, but the man is so blatantly joking that he can't help but chuckle, this time. “Oh, shut up, you too!” He whines.

“What's happened?” Blaine asks, taking off his gloves and coat.

“I've been attacked and defeated by a pile of firewood,” Cody proclaims, with fake drama.

“Was it armed?” Blaine plays along, leaning over to kiss Cody on his head.

“I don't know, I couldn't see. It all happened so fast,” Cody keeps going, shaking his head. “Luckily, Leo took care of me.”

“I knew I could always count on him,” Blaine smiles, leaning over to kiss him on the head too. It's both a game and an inescapable necessity doing to one what he does to the other. Not that he minds, anyway. They're almost ready to resume the activities interrupted by Cody's fall, when Cody looks up and starts screaming.  
Both Blaine and Leo look at him and then follow the direction of his gaze.  
“It's snowing!” Cody squeals excited. He gets off the couch and opens the door, running outside. “Look! Look, it's snowing!”

“Cody, wait!” Leo runs after him, grabbing Cody's coat from the hanger on the go. “You can't go out in the snow dressed like that! You're gonna get pneumonia!”

A cold wind blows from the door left open and the screams of his boys become weaker and weaker as Cody starts running around the house and Leo chases him, screaming at the top of his lungs, trying to get him to wear his coat. Blaine can hear Cody laughing wholeheartedly at him somewhere near the stable. He sighs, putting his own coat back on and grabbing Leo's from the coat hanger, since the kid was so worried for Cody's wellbeing that he forgot his own. It was a nice thing to finally get one to take care of the other, but in the end Blaine always has to be the one who takes care of both of them. But that's okay, he wouldn't want anything else.


End file.
